Cormier said it like he was imitating a sissy. We weren't buddies anymore.

"You keep talking and you're gonna have tampering with a witness. Class C. What will that do to your kid?"

"I'm not tamperin' with anybody," he said. "I tamper with you, you'll friggin' know it, peckerhead."

"Cops'll know it, too."

"Frig the cops," he said.

Cormier looked at me and then turned and flung his beer bottle toward the trees at the back of the yard. The bottle clanged but didn't break. His buddy turned and whipped his, low and hard, and it shattered.

I looked at him.

"You know you throw like a girl?" I said.

He jumped at me, but Cormier pulled him back. I looked at them and the buddy spat. A gob of saliva and mucus landed next to my right foot. I turned and took two steps to the door and stepped inside. As I walked up the stairs, I heard the buddy's voice.

"Chickenshit wimp," he called.

"Redundant moron," I said, and I walked up the stairs and into the kitchen and Roxanne was standing there against the counter, her arms folded and her face gray.

She didn't look mad. She looked scared.

"What's the matter?" I said. "Are you sick?"

She shook her head and took a shallow breath. The phone was off the hook on the counter.

"Somebody call?" I asked.

Roxanne nodded.

"Twice," she said.

"Who was it? What's going on?"

Roxanne bit her lip and started to cry.

14.

"It sounded like maybe it was a woman at first," Roxanne said. "Maybe a woman who smokes a lot. That raspy kind of voice."

She sipped her wine twice. I hung up the phone and went and sat beside her on the couch and waited.

"I thought maybe it was somebody you worked with. She said, at least I thought it was a she, I don't know. She said she was a friend of yours and she'd heard a lot about me. That's what she said. I said, 'Oh, that's nice.' Oh, God."

Roxanne stopped. She looked small and vulnerable.

"And then the voice changed a little. Like it wasn't as much like a woman."

"What did it sound like?"

"Oh, I don't know how to describe it. Not a normal voice, that's all. Like a neuter or something."

She sipped.

"He, it, it said I should come to town more often because ... because he liked to see me in my blue panties. I was shocked. I thought I hadn't heard right, like it didn't sink in. I said, 'What?' It said, it said I had a nice ass and he'd seen me take my panties off."

I put my arm on her shoulder.

"Jack, I have-"

"I know," I said.

"God, Jack! What kind of a place is this? That's what you said Arthur did, isn't it? God, this place is sick. Oh, that voice, it was ... I can still hear it."

I gave her shoulder a squeeze and told her to take it easy. I couldn't tell her she shouldn't worry because that was not true. There was reason to worry. I felt outnumbered again, like I had felt talking to Cormier about the cops. I felt that way again, only worse.

Roxanne leaned on my shoulder, her legs pulled up underneath her on the couch. I didn't tell her about Cormier. Maybe the two things were related. Cormier and his friend get me outside. The third person calls Roxanne, knowing she's alone. But who even knew she was here? I hadn't known she was coming. They had to be watching the house. Would Cormier have that kind of patience? That temper? Could he just sit and wait like that? Set something up that took more planning than picking a fight?

And this took planning.

Unless the caller had been just lucky, he-or she-had been watching Roxanne. She had a pair of medium blue underpants. She had worn them the last time she had come to see me. But Roxanne didn't cavort around the house in her underwear. It was too cold. She might have walked through to the bathroom off the kitchen. I tried to remember and couldn't.

The caller must have had a clear view. Maybe into the bedroom. He must have used binoculars.

Or a telephoto.

Roxanne was saved by the bell. The phone. It was one of her supervisors, and he said somebody was "in crisis," which meant something in the jargon of the social worker.

Roxanne pulled herself together, said she would come but it would be about an hour and a half.

"Yeah, I know forty-three Chestnut," she said. "Oh, do I know it."

She left with her eyes still red, her skin still pale. I walked her to the car door, locked it when I closed it. She reached over and locked the other doors and then gave me a little wave and was gone.

In the back driveway, I walked along the edge of the trees to the place where there was a path worn by the neighborhood kids on knobby-tired bikes. I slid down the litter of oak leaves and snow and fell twice in the dark. I followed the path to the next block and walked down Penobscot Street all the way to downtown.

At the Food Stop, I turned left up the hill and doubled back. In five minutes, I was above the house in the trees that you reached from the next block. Crouched in the dark, I looked at the lights of the living room windows and tried to remember everything I could about Roxanne's last visit.

We'd sat in the living room and had drinks. After a while, we had gone to bed, but I was sure we had pulled the shades in the bedroom. But we hadn't closed the door. I crunched through the brush to my left to see if the bedroom ever came into view. Branches tore at my hair. I slipped and caught myself on a branch, which snapped off. But the bedroom couldn't be seen, not from this side of the house. And the embankment dropped off behind the house. From there, you'd need a helicopter.

Had Roxanne walked through the living room in her underwear? I tried to remember. She had gone to get her wine off the table by the couch. But had she been undressed? I couldn't remember. I did know she had left early Monday morning and had dressed in the dark. That meant it had to have been Sunday night. And without a lens of some kind, there was no way that you could tell the color of anything, much less a pair of moving panties.

So it must have been a vigil. Waiting in the cold for a flicker of movement. Who would go through that for a glimpse of a woman? Arthur. But Arthur was dead that day. The caller had been very much alive.

I turned stiffly and gave the house a last look.

Someone was in the living room window.

I plunged down the hill, sliding and running and falling through the trees, and ran across the lawn and up the driveway. When I got to the door, I slowed and opened it, closing it carefully behind me. Staying close to the wall to keep the stairs from creaking, I crept to the second floor and stood outside the kitchen door. Music was playing; Brubeck."Pennies from Heaven." I pushed the door open slowly.

No one was in the kitchen. No one was in the hallway.

I picked up a paring knife from the dish rack on the counter and walked slowly toward the living room. "Pennies from Heaven" ended. The tape was between tracks. When the next song started, drums, then piano, I stepped around the corner.

"Hey, Jackson," a voice boomed. "Where you been? I thought the Martians beamed you up or something."

Vern was sitting sideways in the big chair, his legs over one arm and one of my Ballantine Ales in his hand. He was reading the Newsweek, folded in half.

I felt nauseated as the adrenaline rush cut off, but I tried to smile and at the same time slide the knife into my back pocket. The point stuck in the seam at the bottom of the pocket and the ivory-colored plastic handle showed at the top.

Vern still looked at the magazine.

"Careful where you sit with that thing," he said.

I took the knife out and tossed it on the table.

"You doing potatoes, or should I wait for a formal invitation next time?" he said. "If you're expecting somebody else, I hope they don't show up."

"No, I was just-"

"Acute paranoia," Vern said. "Tell me: How long ago did you start arming yourself? Do you keep loaded guns in the house? Do you feel like everyone's out to get you?"

"Today, no, and they are," I said.

"I was afraid of that," Vern said, and he smiled.

Vern was a pretty good sports reporter. He was a pretty good writer, and he knew sports inside and out. But what made him better than the usual reporter was his ability to listen. He was big and shapeless and he had a way of smiling and listening at the same time that was disarming. It worked on kids. It worked on coaches. Sometimes it worked on me.

He listened that night. I told him about Roxanne's calls and Martin and his picture and Vigue and the picture of the waitress. He knew which waitress I meant.

"Jesus," Vern said, putting his beer on the floor. "I knew Arthur was strange, but I didn't know he was so ambitious."

"An obsession," I said. "Probably he knew it was wrong, but the more he tried to stop, the more he was driven to it."

"Guy needed help."

"Too late now."

Vern picked up his beer but it was empty. I went and got him another one. He opened it and took a gulp.

"I don't know, Jackson," he said. "You New York agitators. I don't know. I think you've got something with this mill tax crap. I know it seems routine to you, but you're going after the sacred cow here. And you're from away."

"So are you," I said.

"Yeah, but I write about their kids. I say nice things. Like it when they win."

"Cheerleader."

"I know," Vern said. "They're tight skirts, but somebody has to wear them. No, really. Don't get me wrong. I think this mill story should be done. Company's been pushing this place around for too long. Forever. But think about it. Martin's idea of a hard-hitting piece was reporting the actual vote at the council meeting instead of just saying things were approved. You come in with this Wall Street Journal stuff and sources and all that, and you've got to expect the manure to hit the fan."

"That's the way I do it," I said. "Either that or I leave."

"And by the sounds of it, there are some people around here who would love to see it."

I got up and looked out the window toward where I'd been standing in the cold, but couldn't see anything. Vern still sat in the chair.

"Another thing," he said, behind me. "You forget sometimes, coming from away. Just because this is a small town, don't think everybody's quaint. Some of these guys would give the scumbags in New York a run for their money."

"I know that."

"I'm not saying you don't. Reminding you, I guess."

"But this sex stuff. That's not tough. That's just weird. And Vigue knowing something about it but not saying? I always liked him. Straight cop, I thought."

"Straight but bitter," Vern said.

"Just because he can't be chief, is he gonna start lying or whatever it is he's doing? Covering up?"

"I doubt it."

"And these calls. Is this place filled with perverts or what?"

"Just Paul, and he's got his hands full," Vern said.

"I'm serious," I said.

"So am I," Vern said. "You've got to watch out-watch out for Roxanne, too."

"I know," I said, suddenly weary.

"And another thing," Vern said. "Get some curtains."

So what am I supposed to do, I thought. Watch television? College football highlights to take my mind off the wacko looking in the windows? Or sit back with a good book, a thriller about somebody being stalked by some nut? Call an old friend from the city and tell him how my life was going?

Right.

That didn't leave much. Clean up the mess a little more, do the dishes, wrap up the trash and take the bag down to the cans in the shed. Sit in the dark and drink until I was in enough of a stupor to go to bed. Add a hangover to the problems that weren't going to go away while I slept. They weren't going anywhere.

I walked into the kitchen and took three pieces of pizza out of the box and wrapped them in foil because there wasn't any Saran Wrap. I stuffed the box in the trash and threw a dirty knife and fork in the sink. There were two Samuel Smiths left in the six-pack carton on the counter and I started to stick them in the refrigerator, then stuck one back on the counter. I took the opener out of the sink and popped the top on the one and took it out to the living room, turning the kitchen light out on the way. That left the one lamp on in the living room, and I turned it off and dragged my chair over by the window.

I sat in the chair in the dark and looked out toward the blackness that was the trees. When the wind blew there was a faint rustle from the oaks, almost like the sound of waves crashing on a beach. I drank the beer slowly, setting the bottle between my legs and watching the vague darkness. There were things out there but I couldn't quite make them out. Trees. Houses. Lights. People who were doing something-something that was wrong and strange and had more and more to do with me.